Our Summer Thus Far--A Catching Up

"Live in the sunshine.

Swim the sea.

Drink the wild air."  

R.W. Emerson

      I am sure I have said it before in the short history of this little blog, but I once heard an older teacher once say that there were three reasons to get into teaching and they were June, July, and August. It was a joke in more ways than one; and a cruel one at that. The first being that a teacher usually has to have a job during this "vacation time" and attend some sort of continuing education item along the way. And the second being that the three month summer has gone the way of cassette tapes and vhs machines even though America's greatest minds of the 20th and 21st centuries had a three month summer, all the wisdom bottled up in the NEA decided that the educational system of Bill Gates, TS Eliot, Dorothy Sayers, Steve Jobs, the scientists of NASA who won the Space Race, Stephen Hawking, Mark Zukerburg, etc got it all wrong and kids just need more time in school and less time off because a few studies said they were just forgetting too much info and that just wasn't going to cut it when they wanted to teach students how to pass tests and teachers were having to spend so much time reviewing and educating the students. And the results are that the ole' USA continues to fade farther and farther from view within the educational landscape of the world. I could say more, but won't. A shorter summer isn't the only ill of the current educational climate, but it is one of a long list and sadly private schools follow most every wrong turn that public schools make. They feel they must to survive and they are sadly right. Anyway, I have strayed as usual, but you, my faithful reader, are more than used to it I'm sure. I wish the summer was still three full months long and that those were the only meager reasons one would want to "get into" teaching. 

     But...but...but...we only have two months and Mel and I usually try to cram as much into those eight weeks as we can while the fetters of the school life have been freed from me for a brief moment. It is a time we both look forward to all year and now that FH is here, it is a time I can't hardly wait for. Being away from your boy for 10-14 hours a day is really no good at all. And so, five weeks have passed us like a freight train in the middle of the night and we have had the good and the really bad and everything in between. And for the last two weeks, we have been living somewhere between an Amish paradise (Sorry, Weird Al and Coolio), a camp for Luddites, and a band on the run (Sorry, Sir Paul). I know it is a very weird place, but maybe by the end of the post you will know right about where we are. If not, it'd be okay just to nod your head like you understand like I do when someone is telling me about how the country club isn't what it used to be. Here is a sort of brief summary of our little summer thus far:  

      Exams were graded, grades were entered, report cards were printed and sent home, book and classroom inventories were turned in, and my door was locked for the last time at around 5:00 pm on May 25th. I love teaching and Covenant is a wonderful place, but by the end of a school year, you are ready to walk away from it all and never come back. If you don't teach, you will think I am a bad person, but if you do teach, you will understand fully. We had an odd night that night. It was meant for celebration, but ended with two sad humans on a couch muscling through some unwanted Wendy's with a warm, sleeping baby upstairs that only those with little children would understand. So, the first full day of summer vacation we headed the trusty maroon Subie south loaded down for a fun and restful time down in the Colony City. However, after only being there a few hours we both (Mel and I) began complaining of sore throat feelings and sore bones and by the middle of the following morning we were both deep in the covers and begging for some sort of relief. I am not sure what we had, but for the next three days, we were somewhere between the 1919 Spanish Flu Epidemics, SARS, and the Black Plague. I know those are not things to joke about, but we felt terrible and God graciously allowed us to be at Mel's parents home and they took care of FH beautifully and mercifully. I said it then and I will freely say it now, I am not sure what we would have done had we been at our own home by ourselves. I am not that strong. Mel is, but I am not. We are so blessed to have two sets of parents that love us, want us near them, love our child like he is their's, care for us, and still give to us with overwhelming generosity. We don't deserve it and never will. We are merely blessed. After four or so days of fevers, chills, achy bones, sleepless nights, we were on the mend and slowly loaded the car to head back home to prepare for our second week of summer: Beach Week!

     My family has been going to the same beach, Ormond Beach, since I was in middle school. We have had a time share at the same condo, the Maverick, since my dad got it off a patient who had to get rid of it. We used to spend our week late in August back when summer lasted three months and then once we got older and I headed off to college and then Amy followed suit a few years later, my parents moved our week closer to the beginning of August, but then two of the four of us became teachers and our start dates for the first day of school kept inching closer and closer to the end of July, my mom soon became the lone member of Beach Week. She changed it up and moved our week to the beginning of June over the last several years and this has been great for everyone and my older brother has even been able to come. And last summer we made the big jump to a new locale, Plantation Island, but have no fear, we are still in Ormond. The Hines Terrace crew attended Beach Week last year, but it was very close to an experience that Dante merely touched on. I am sure there have been those that have pulled off a great week of vacation with a one month old, but we were not those people. We turned the 6 hour car trip into about a 9 hour trip and good ole' FH hated the beach and all that surrounded it just about more than Nancy Reagan hated drugs. And just for some additional flare and comfort, there was a tropical depression that sat over our hotel for the majority of our visit, so we sat in our rooms with a newborn who wasn't sleeping and watched ourselves go to the brink of insanity. It wasn't a good time. It was a time we have tried to forget. My family was very kind to let us come then, but we hope we never go to that dark place again (pun intended). 

   So, as we approached Beach Week 2013, we held our breath and hoped for the best and made a mental note to expect the worst. Little Fordzilla made the car trip made a little rough, but we made it in a little over 6 hours. It was rough because he hates the car, but once at the beach, things turned golden. He loved it all. He loved the sand. He loved his sweet cousins. He loved the surf. He LOVED the pool. He took to beach life like a labrador does to water. And we woke each day hoping that we could copy the previous day and for the most part it was done. As the week wore on, he began to get more and more tired, but overall Beach Week 2013 was an awesome success. And we were so glad and relieved. 

Just taking it all in.

   It was great to see my family and we had a great time. We ate a lot. We got a bit of a tan. FH and I had some great morning runs on all, but one morning we were there. Mel and I went on a date!!! We played catch with the football and the frisbee till my arm hurt for days after we got back. We hit the ice cream truck that runs on the beach not once, but I think three times. We grilled through two days of  tropical depression rain, but this year we got smart and put our beach tent over the grill. I am sure it is some sort of OSHA standard not to be done, but it beats getting wet everyday of the week. We laughed. We got into a few arguments (A Dark Family tradition). We spent enough time in the pool to look like raisins. We bowled. We spent too much at the grocery store and got everything we all three wanted! As you can see, I could go on, but won't. We had a great time. And are so thankful that my kind and generous parents let us come, paid for our room, let us eat their food, wanted us to be there, etc. We wouldn't really be able to hit a week at a beach without them. And it was so great to see my brother's family since they live in the Lone Star state and we have sadly reduced our time of getting to see them about once or twice a year , but we have thankfully gotten to see them three times in one way or another this year. And to top it off, we got to see my sister Amy, her husband, and our new nephew, Jackson Carter Bass. He is only four months old and they braved the week and did an awesome job. 

   Beach week ended on a very warm Saturday and we packed it up and headed home via St. Augustine and lunch at the Columbia Restaurant. It was sad to leave, but it was time to move onto the Summer Phase III, which involved working for my father in law and living the South Georgia life. When we got home however, we noticed our dogs were in MIA. We didn't panic because this is a usual occurrence with our four pawed friends. They live 99.9% of their lives on our back deck laying in the shade with the occasional dash for a squirrel or to bark at our neighbor's dogs, but once our car heads anywhere and we leave them at home, they pretend they are in a movie where they must escape from Alcatraz or die trying. Our very kind friends, Tiffany and Chris, watched them while we were at the beach and they spent most of the time trying to find the newest weak link in our fence where the dogs were getting out and some neighbors down the street spent a lot of their time herding them up from our street and putting them back in. And as we drove into our neighborhood, there were signs all over the place like the one below. And from what I've heard, they also made some cameo appearances on Facebook. After several hours of looking for them, going door to door on several streets, and playing phone tag, we got our pups. I love those two dogs, but sometimes, I wish I could have them put on a K9 version of Scared Straight or at least a pep talk from this guy: 

One of numerous posters put up by a very kind lady who even teared up a bit when I came to get our two bad dogs because she loved them so much. We are blessed that God takes care of us and our stupid dogs. 

    We got back from the beach late Saturday night and rested on Sunday and one our friends had a baby the following Monday and we found ourselves at the hospital till midnight. She had a baby girl and they named her Ada. It was odd being there for another baby besides Ford. And it was very serene to walk across the bridge from the parking deck and to the hospital carrying the baby boy I first went there with Mel to have. Tuesday morning we were to head south to the Colony City and I was to begin my annual summer stint at Hunter Industrial Bag Repair, but instead I woke up at around 5 am feeling like this guy:

    Except, I had extreme back pain in the upper right section of my back. It felt sort of like someone was stabbing me in the upper back.  I am not usually one for laying in bed and giving up because of pain, but it seemed my whole body hurt and it was all coming from one place. I put ice to it. I put heat to it. I took ibuprofen. I took Motrin. Mel massaged my back with sport's creme. And then I laid in the bed and did my best to recover for a whole day, but nothing seemed to help. Needless to say, we didn't head south. Instead, Mel took care of two babies; one that was 13 months and the other was 33. And the next morning it wasn't much better, but we headed south hoping that the trip would loosen things up. We, however, arrived in the Fitz. and my back was still carrying a knife in it. And instead of working for Mark, I found myself laying around the Hunter abode and then going to a chiropractor that wasn't my dad and he helped, but I couldn't move much less work. Several days went by, we loaded up and headed back to Macon and just waited for my back to quit hurting and to be honest many, many days have gone by and it still isn't at 100%. We have been hovering at around 90%, but life goes on. 

    The Sunday after we got back to Macon was Father's Day: June 16th. Mel and FH said they didn't have much of a plan and asked me what I wanted and what I wanted to do. And I knew exactly what to answer. Ever since Mel told me she was pregnant, there were two things that I wanted to do with our little baby. One was to put him or her in the BOB jogging stroller and head out. And the second item was to put a baby seat on a bike and really hit the town with a co-pilot. Well, ever since FH was eight months old, we have been making good use of the BOB. And now that Ford was a little over a year, we had reached the point of being able to do the baby bike seat thing. So, we did a lot of internet research on baby bike seats, read a lot of reviews, and then headed out to our local sporting goods stores and purchased a bike seat and a great little helmet. 

     We came home and assembled the bike seat and put it on the bike. I will post more about the bike and the seat in a later blog, but it is all too awesome. The bike I am using is a late 1970's Huffy Bay Pointe 3-Speed bike. I rescued it from the rafters of my in-laws storage building. I won't say much more because I am excited about the future blog post, but it is the same bike Mel's parents used to ride her around! And now FH and I are keeping the roads hot and we have already ridden around 50 miles in and around our house and a little beyond and it is everything I hoped it would be. The first several rides FH seemed far past apprehensive, but now he has full command of the back seat and now we talk as we ride! 

   We did all this on Saturday prior to the actual day, but Sunday we hit two bike rides, church, and a bag full of take home goodness from Margaritas Mexican Restaurant because someone feel asleep, and then a restful afternoon before we headed off to the Colony City for my first week of work. It was a great second Father's Day. I could type much, much more about what I have learned about God, my beautiful and gracious wife, my lovable son, and myself since becoming a father, but I won't for now. Becoming a father is the third best thing that has ever happened to me. And being a father is the hardest and best thing I have ever done. I come from a great father and each day I try to be the best father for this guy: 

   Each summer for the past several summers, I work for father in law. And each morning when I wake up, I tell Mel that I am going to the mines or she tells me to have a good day at the mines. No, it is not as hard as the picture above, but it is strenuous at times and very dirty work at all times. My father in law has a business repairing components of carbon black train cars. He used to work at a place that repaired and rebuilt all types of train cars, but then he invented a way to repair components that they used to scrap and or throw away. He is a genius. And in a round about way, it is a true green job. I am amazed that he thought of and created all the different processes that we use each day. And each year, he tweaks them a little to make them more efficient and more enduring. And if you don't know what carbon black is, I will tell you. It looks like this: 

And they haul it in train cars that look like this (the black one):

And it is used for a whole variety of purposes; everything from toner, to pen ink, to mascara, to paint pigment, to a fortifier for rubber, in brakes, and for making tires. It is very useful and can be found in so many of the products we use on a daily basis. Until Mark started his business, I had never heard of it and didn't know anything about it. Now, after around seven years of working for and with Mark, I know a little about what they do with it, how they mine it and produce it, and how they transport the majority of it. And after a long 10 hour day of working with the bags they carry it in, I know how it can  get on you, stay on you, and even after multitudes of showers, hand washings, etc can still be found on you weeks after you have worked with it. And this is the job of Hunter Industrial Bag Repair. Take the components that make the carbon black train car work (transport bags, gates, gate covers, etc.) and when they need cleaning and repairing, do just that: clean them, repair them, rebuild them, test them, and then send them back. 

   And each summer, he (Mark) allows me to come each summer and work. It is really more than this that he allows. He actually lets us live with them, takes me to work, and they feed us three meals a day, and then he pays me to work. Yes, I am working. And yes, the work is hard and I get dirty and at the end of a 40-50 hour week, I am exhausted, but it is good and satisfying work. And after standing in the classroom and doing most my week's work and feeling mentally drained, but not physically, it is so nice to have a little bit of a reversal for a couple months and a few weekends each year. Every summer, I learn a lot and feel very blessed to have a situation like this. I am pretty sure no other job would allow me the perimeters that this one does. It is a great job and as Jose' (his lone full time employee) says, Mark is the Jefe of the Jefes. 

    The school I work and teach at is a classical school. It is also a Christian school. I will spare you for the time being about what exactly is a classical Christian school and what it looks like from the inside out, but each year, several members of my school are sent to the annual ACCS conference. Like any other association that hosts a yearly conference, they hold it in different locations each year and it is attended by most or all of the schools in the association. Next year will mark my ninth year as a teacher and my sixth for doing so at a classical Christian school. I had never gotten to attend the yearly conference and in the back of my mind, I had always wanted to and so this year when my administration asked me to attend and then graciously paid my way, I jumped at the chance. 

   This year's conference was conveniently in Atlanta and with a group of about 13 other teachers from my school, We met at 4:45 am and caravanned up to Hotlanta and spent two and a half days attending the Association of Classical Christian Schools Annual Conference. In my nine years of teaching, I have had the chance to attend several conferences or weekend workshops and I will say that they come in three varieties: the impractical,  the idealistic, or the complete waste of time. If you are a teacher, you will understand, if you aren't you will assume I am as dumb as a brick and a bad teacher, which I may be, but if you had attended the events I have, I am sure we could agree to my observations. I was expecting much of the same from this event, but I was gladly and pleasantly proved wrong. Each large session speaker and each seminar I attended was either inspiring, or practical, or both. I learned so much in a short amount of time that a couple weeks have gone by and I am still digesting what I heard, observed, read, and wrote notes about. I bought several books and am reading through them and am excited about the 2013-2014 school year. It was a great conference and a great time spent with my fellow teachers. It was a good shot in the arm and I am so greatly full that my school, Covenant Academy, sent me. I am a better teacher for having gone. 

Here I am trying to get FH to wear the signature HIBR hat, but it was a no go!

  

  After attending the ACCS conference, heading back home, reclaiming the house for a short time, doing some laundry, mowing the yard, feeding the chickens, working in the garden, and watering some plants, I headed back down to the Fitz. for another week of work. It was good to be back in the Colony City, but it was much better to see my bride and my boy. Being away from them is at the top of my Top Five Most Hated Items. And when I saw them again, there was much hugging and catching up. 

   I worked for a week at HIBR and then Mark let us off for a week and now that week is over and tomorrow we start back at it in the shop at 7 am. We have had a great week here at home and haven't really done much other than wait for it to quit raining and then watch it rain some more. We have done a lot of little things and even went to Atlanta for the day and took FH to the Georgia Aquarium. I will do a post about that someday in the future, but just know it was amazing and awesome in the true sense of the words. 

  Well, there it is. The whole of our summer so far. We have been busy and we have been lazy. We have driven many miles and yet, we have woken up in the same places for the most part. It is has been a good summer so far and I look forward to the second half of it and I hope it slows down a bit, but I know it won't. It never does, but instead just goes faster and faster. And before long, I will be standing up in front of a class, handing out syllabi, and starting another school year. Hope you enjoyed the post. And hope it didn't bore you. I appreciate you taking the time to read it. 

Happy and blessed summertime,

  DAVID

The 2013 Edition of Our Backyard Garden

“To husband is to use with care, to keep, to save, to make last, to conserve. Old usage tells us that there is a husbandry also of the land, of the soil, of the domestic plants and animals - obviously because of the importance of these things to the household. And there have been times, one of which is now, when some people have tried to practice a proper human husbandry of the nondomestic creatures in recognition of the dependence of our households and domestic life upon the wild world. Husbandry is the name of all practices that sustain life by connecting us conservingly to our places and our world; it is the art of keeping tied all the strands in the living network that sustains us." 

--Wendell Berry, "Bringing it to the Table" 

    Here at Hines Terrace, we love growing a garden and everything that goes with it. It is something we did as children and something we are so glad that we have added into our adult life. We begin growing a garden together in summer of 2010. We started small with just two raised beds made out of wood from our old deck and an old wooden flower bed that I used for the first of my several failed corn "crops". Each year we do a little more and there has been talk about "plowing up" the whole backyard, but more rational forces have prevailed. This year, we weren't real sure about how we were going to grow much of anything because so much of our efforts have been put into growing this guy:

     However, seeds were bought, chicken manure and compost were added, beds were mended, soil was added and then turned, weeds were picked, and Mel's articulate plans (See Below! Even her plans look like a piece of art!) were made all in grand detail. And so a garden was meant to be and on a fine evening somewhere between me arriving home late due to it being track & field season and feeding and bathing Fordzilla, Mel placed the majority of the seeds in the ground as I watched young FH. We had planted the potatoes and the tomatoes about a week or so earlier.  And so, here is a small pictorial with a little explanation of our 2013 edition garden. These pictures are a few weeks old and there will be an update, but for now, here it is for better or worse. 

The articulate and masterful garden sketches of one Sweet Melissa.

     A view from the top! Our yard is oddly terraced and we have chosen the garden to be in our bottom yard a few more inches away from our dogs. It is still not safe, but at least the thought makes us feel better. Jack is a closet vegan. What can we say? At night, he eats his weight in anything from peppers to cucumbers!  We have four raised beds that are 4'x8' and two that are 4'x4'. We originally bought the cheap soil and added about a bag or two of the Black Cow compost. Now we just add a few more bags of the cheap soil and our homemade concoction we'll call Four Bawdy Hens. Either way, things seem to love growing in the organic matter of others and we take advantage of that. The new way is just a bit cheaper and we don't have to leave the house. 

   A view from the bottom! This pic really shows off the herbs. They have really taken to their witness protection move from their place on the deck. I know this sounds like hyperbole, but trust me, they were witness to many crimes committed at the paws of one brown and one black pup. In all actuality, we stole the "herbs in a raised bed idea" from Callaway Gardens two years ago during a visit to see the lights. I thought they had all died and we were going to have to start from scratch, but once the weather turned a little warmer and the Spring rains became abundant that came back with a vengeance minus the basil. We have already had to trim the rosemary and the cilantro back twice. 

   The potatoes and the cucumbers. We started both from seeds or from the eyes. Nothing grows more quickly than potatoes; well except maybe weeds, but they do grow very fast. You can actually plant them two or three times before the weather turns cold again. We picked up the little white fences under the extreme bargain table of our local Ace Hardware. I think we paid about $.50 a piece for them. When the prices are that heap, it really is the place!

   The tomatoes. We have had touch and go luck with our tomatoes. Some years, we have a bounty and others we just can't seem to get many. I will say they are a tricky fruit to grow. Last year, I thought it was a lean year, till our neighbor thanked us one night in passing for all the tomatoes we were giving her and that they were so good. We said that she was welcome, but we started guarding the produce a little more closely and found her son was raiding it about once a day and taking them to his mom. A brief scolding was given and her source of veggies dried up, but what are we suppose to do, let the kid and Jack steal everything that comes out of the ground? I think not! 

   We usually start with the small plants instead of the seeds. This year we went with two Big Boy varieties, two Roma varieties, one husky red cherry variety, and our first heirloom variety, the Golden Jubilee. We are pretty excited about the latter. The tomato cages we were getting at our local places were just not working for us, so Mel's gracious and kind dad built us some "real" cages and they are seem to really be doing the trick. 

An inside look at one our Roma plants. Grow, grow, grow. We've got Caprese salad on the brain!

   This bed is our catchall bed this season. And the only item that is really going so far is our Egyptian Crawling onion we bought at our local market. I also thought it had died, but it has come back in a grand way. I used to not be that big of a fan of a green onion in food or with a meal, but these have changed my mind and I can't get enough of them. Besides the onion, the bed is planted with peppers, zinnias, and watermelons (our first try with these too!).

An up-close picture of the Egyptian Crawling Onion. It blooms and then if you plant the bloom, it too becomes another plant. Pretty neat, right? Right. Especially, since it only cost $5. 

   The first of our herb beds. This one contains cilantro, mint, some newly planted garlic, and some very slow-growing basil. I may splurge on some basil plants because I've got too many plans for basil this summer for it to be taking forever to grow! 

   Our second herb bed. This one contains thyme, rosemary, parsley, chives, and oregano. As I mentioned earlier, they all looked dead and far past their prime, but they have come back in a big way. If you have ever cooked or eaten food with real, fresh herbs in it, you know the taste is hard to beat. We love using these and that is good because with herbs, the more you use them, the better they grow. 

One of the pretty blooms on our chives. 

   Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed and I hope your garden is coming in well. We love our little backyard, "victory" garden and are excited to see what it will make this year. We look forward to growing it all year and this year, we are going to try to save, can, freeze, etc as much of it as we can so that we enjoy it even longer than in the past. You would be amazed at the amount of food that come from a garden even as small as ours. 

Happy Reading,

  David

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating--A Book Review

"My bed was an island within the desolate sea of my room. Yet I knew that there were other people homebound from illness or injury, scattered here and there throughout rural towns and cities around the world. And as I lay there, I felt a connection to all of them. We, too, were a colony of hermits." pg. 84

"There is a certain depth of illness that is piercing in its isolation; the only rule is uncertainty, and the only movement is the passage of time. One cannot bear to live through another loss of function, and sometimes friends and family cannot bear to watch. An unspoken, unbridgeable divide may widen. Even if you are still who you were, you cannot actually be who you are. Sometimes the people you know well withdrawal, and then even the person you know as yourself begins to change." pg. 131

    

    Elisabeth Tova Bailey is a fine writer; a much better writer than I will probably ever be. And her book, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, has gotten rave reviews and even won a few awards. And it is a big hit with the folks who frequent the likes of the Good Reads website and other book-related websites and forums. It came highly recommended to me from both people I trust and from internet sources that I look to for book suggestions. And all of this brought about a grand amount of anticipation on my part to get my hands on this little book. I was so sure that I would open up the covers and begin reading an account account akin to Thoreau's Walden or Muir's 1000 Mile Walk to the Gulf. But to my great avail, sadly it was nothing of the sort.

"Slime is the sticky essence of a gastropod's soul, the medium for everything in its life: locomotion, defense, healing, courting, mating, and egg protection. Nearly one-third of my snail's daily energy went into slime production. And rather than making a single batch of "all-purpose" slime, my snail had a species specific recipe for each of these needs and for different parts of its body. It could adjust the ingredients, just as a good cook would, to meet a particular occasion. And in a catastrophic accident in which a snail is squashed, it can release a flood of lifesaving, medicinal mucus packed with antioxidants and regenerative properties." pg. 71

    I wanted so badly to like this book because one of my fondest memories is of spending a week hiking the Foothills Trail in South Carolina with my youngest sister and mom and taking the time one afternoon to watch a snail eat. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever watched. And I was hoping Bailey's account would put the feelings I experienced from watching the wild snail eat into words. And I really didn't want to say or write a post saying I didn't like it because of how much I wanted to like this book. Each night I would read a few more pages hoping to come upon the section in the book that would really change things for me. I was waiting and waiting for that magic paragraph where Bailey would take the emotions I felt and turn them into prose, but the last page came and went and I never got to that paragraph. I do hope you will read it and tell me why you liked it and how I missed the goodness of it. I may, as I have done in the past, read it again in an attempt to find the goodness in it. It took me three full readings of, The Catcher and the Rye, before I saw what Salinger was trying to really say. I have tried to explain many times that I am an amateur reader at best and this may be the occasion where you truly see that it is the truth.

    There were two items I disliked in the book and which seemed to ruin it for me. The first was that Bailey writes as the stereotypical cold and distanced scientist when it comes to both the snail and her illness. It felt at time as if I were reading a science textbook, but it wasn't the relaying of facts that gave this impression, it was rather the way the writing aside from a few high points, felt void of emotion. I did not expect there to be sappiness on every page or for it to be a great expose of sentimentalism, but I did want there to be the emotionalism that I've come to love and admire from naturalists like this quote from John Muir, 

    “No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening - still all is Beauty!” 

   But this type of emotion seemed to be void from this book and Bailey wrote as one detached from both nature and from her own personal illness that forced her into the "lonely isolation" she writes from. Her descriptions of the snail and her observations of the snail do contain emotion at times and she even seems amazed at the actions of the snail, but it just seems to be missing something that I felt it needed. It could also just be me. Maybe you will grab the book, a warm cup of coffee or a cold limeade, and settle in for an afternoon of reading and maybe you will feel what she was trying to get across. I just did not feel it. 

   And the second item I found in this book that really kept getting to me was Bailey's constant mentioning of or her dogged dedication to the "evolution" of the snail species as well as the evolution of all species. I fully understand that the theory of evolution, though invalidated by truly scientific evidence (observable, measurable  repeatable evidence), is believed by most all people, especially academics. I know this. I teach science for a living. I use both Christian and Secular textbooks. I have been to museums all over the country and they are full of the "facts" of many people's grand theories about how things might have come about. I can usually stand a small bit of an author's obligatory need to mention his or her dedication to the evolution of all things, but Bailey seems to mention it at every turn. And what I found to be most distracting to me was that she would either mention something amazing about a snail; whether it be it's slime, or eating habits, or ability to go dormant, or their odd and varied reproduction processes. And she would either precede or conclude these true facts about snails with a conjecture of some other scientist's theory about something involving evolutionary theory and the chanced development of something that makes the snail perfect for what it is. And this for me is pure lunacy of which it is hard for me accept. It is not the existence or presence of a theory that is different from one I hold to be true that seems crazy to me, but rather it is the blind dedication to something that doesn't need to be true in order for something to be seen as amazing. Bailey could have written an account of her observations of her snail and never mentioned how it may have evolved and it would have been a good and truly scientific account. I just kept finding it amazing that she would write of something so intricate and then would attribute it to chance adaptation and mutations. 

   I would have let this dedication to evolution to go and just chalked it to being a book involving aspects of science that was written after the 1960's until I read her epilogue where she describes in detail both the acquiring of her snail knowledge and more aspects about the snail species and of her illness. She writes of genetic mutations that once acquired in her body wreaked havoc on her and in her poor body. And this is where I have lost patience or even tolerance with writers, speakers, scientists, etc. Evolution, though parts of it being found true and possible at times, is a scientific theory. Theories, by definition, lack the evidence in order to be made into laws, which also by definition, are true in every aspect as long as certain perimeters exist. However, nowadays, it seems that one either believes evolution to be wholeheartedly true or they are ignorant and foolish. It would seem crazy if this were felt about some other theory, say something economic like Keynesian economics or say whether or not Bigfoot exists. It would seem ludicrous for whole groups of people to force those around them to believe in something where there exists more than one field of thought about an item and no true science or proof for the belief. And yet, with evolution, this is this par for the course. And what frustrates to no end at times is if one truly takes the time, as Bailey did, to observe nature, it seems almost hard for me to comprehend how one could throw all the brilliance and intricate complexity that is found in even one square foot of nature to the winds of chance and mutation, but Bailey, as well as most writers and thinkers today do this. 

    Now, please do not read this as a demand for them to just believe as I believe because I will not do as they do. I do not expect them to observe the nature that surrounds them and then write a brilliant piece on how Genesis 1 & 2 are real and they have proved the existence of the triune God by watching a snail eat. I do not want this, but I do expect for them to think and truly focus on the images they are seeing and put that up against the knowledge and facets of evolution that they know to be true and those that are merely the thoughts of men. I do not see how one could explain the perfect complexities of snail slime/mucus and then attribute it all to perfect adaptation or genetic mutation over long periods of time while being forced to lie in a bed because of a genetic mutation that has almost taken everything that she holds dear from her. Knowing full well with enormous amounts of true scientific evidence, the observable, measurable, and repeatable type of evidence, that mutations and adaptations only leave an organism with no new traits and mutations at best leave organisms with odd, seemingly unuseful traits, say like a dog with two colored eyes or a person who is double-jointed or in the worst case scenario, the mutations being terminal. The mutations don't aid in their survival but rather take away from it or end up being a non-factor. 

   I know that I am beating an old, decomposed and long dead horse, but it just seems odd to me and a bit tragic to read an author, like Bailey, who is a very fine writer, and read several pages about how a snail's reproduction processes and how they are hermaphrodites and how this allows them to regenerate their species in a full variety of ways depending on the current environmental conditions and then get to watch the whole reproductive process take place and then chalk it all up to a theory where no true evidence exits while watching real, true science taking place in front of your very own eyes that sit in your ravaged body that is being torn apart from a pathogen and its mutations and say that the snail developed these amazing and awe-inspiring reproductive processes through millions of years of constant adaptation and genetic mutation. It just doesn't add up to me and the longer I watch nature and the longer I observe even the most minute aspects of the world around me, the harder it becomes for me to understand this line of thought. 

Happy reading and today, even if it is only a brief moment, observe (truly try to see) what is happening in nature around you. You won't regret it. 

  David

   

National Ride Your Bike to Work Week: May 13th-May 17th

*Several attempts to post this were made over the last two days, but they just didn't pan out. Technology and time are some of our biggest friends, but they can really be our biggest enemy too. The editors here at HTH greatly apologize and hope you will overlook our many weaknesses once again. 

   

    Today begins the, National Ride Your Bike to Work Week, that is put on by the League of American Cyclists. Many places began last Thursday, but most places celebrate the week during this current week, May 13th-17th. I was surfing the web at the end of last week and ran across a very funny picture of a nun riding a bike in celebration of the week and it along with a few other items inspired me to attempt to participate this year since I have been riding my bike to work this year a little more than in years past. Some very bold words were even said about my attempt to Sweet Melissa to which she replied, "...we aren't destitute and we have two cars for you to drive. You don't have to take it that seriously..." May 17th is the official ride your bike to work day for this year, but many clubs and riders are attempting to make it a week long celebration. We here at HTH are joining in the week long idea unless the rains come and there isn't enough space on this server for me to rage about how I feel when I have to do things in the rain.  

   The League of American Cyclists was begun in 1880 by a group of men who were known as the "wheelmen". The bicycle had really just been invented and they were already facing many challenges in their efforts to ride their new contraptions and so they founded an advocacy group to help push for equality on the roadways. Some of the League's most famous members were the Wright Brothers and J.D. Rockefeller. Although times have changed and cyclists are not fighting muddy and severely rutted roads and folks in wagons and on rowdy horses, the League of American Cyclist are still there fighting for equal rights on the roads for cyclists. They sponsor local, state, and even nation-wide events, educational sessions, and they sponsor and lobby for better cycling conditions in every state in the US. And their website is a great place for many fine resources in terms of cycling.

The nice nun who inspired some laughs and my participation in this blessed week

     Commuting by bike is a tricky affair and those in places where commuting is smiled upon don't truly understand how hard and dangerous it is for the rest of us to make it to work in one piece and they look smugly at the rest of us for not adopting their way of life, but it just isn't that easy. Riding to work by bike is just plain hard work no matter where you live, what type of bike you are riding, or how safe your commute is. You are actually powering yourself and all your gear over hills, through traffic, and right next to semi-trucks to your place of work. This is no easy feat. I feel I need to say this because bicycle commuting is always presented in this very idealistic and idyllic way. The pictures you see are of people in coat and tie or hip skirt and blouse pedaling under huge trees with the wind blowing in their hair as they smile aboard their $4000 custom built commuter bike in a special bike lane. And although I am sure that is true in some places, it is a rare scene for most every other place. They do not show the heavy pre-planning involved. They don't show the sweaty shirts and pants. They don't show a pic of the sweaty guy struggling up a huge hill with his backpack on chugging along on his $90 Huffy with a semi in front of him blowing him off the road, a SVU behind him driven by a private school mom who is texting her tennis instructor while she drives, and the guy in the monster truck at the next intersection blowing his Dixie horn at you and screaming, "Go Lance!". No, this is not the whole picture, but it is more true than the previously mentioned scene of Ryan Gosling riding and smiling and saying something like, "Hey Girl, wanna cuddle a little while after we go pick wildflowers?".

   Take me for instance. Georgia is ranked 23rd out of the 50 states for bicycle safety and accommodation. I would have truly ranked it much lower and I would hate to ride a mile in those other states. And Macon, the city I live in and do most of riding in, is ranked 375th out of 400 American cities with populations larger than 65,000 people for bike safety and accommodation. I get this ranking and also know why my former town of Dothan, Alabama didn't make the list. And on another list of the top 500 cities in America for bike commuting, only two cities in Georgia make the list as opposed to the 20+ cities in California that made the list.   

     And although, bike commuting does take a lot of physical and mental work and requires planning. It is more than worth it for reasons other than fitness and money, but for some that may be enough. And I know, that it is not for everyone and I don't expect that. My vocation allows for it and so I can do it. My commute is only about 4 miles as opposed to those who live 90 miles from work. I enjoy riding my bike for a multitude of reasons. When I ride to school 8-10 days out of the month, I usually save somewhere between $20-$40 and the wear and tear on my car with around town driving. I also get time to think about the day on the way and then rehash the day on my ride home. The blood flowing helps me wake up in the mornings and when I walk in, I am fully ready to dive into work as opposed to wishing I could just snag a few more minutes of sleep. I also enjoy the sights and sounds I get to see along the way and the people who talk to me as I ride or am stopped at a light. I feel I get to "hear, breathe, see, listen, and talk to the living city" as O'Henry once wrote about walking in NYC. However, all those previous items are great, but the best thing I enjoy about commuting is that there is this great and simple pleasure of sitting at work knowing I powered myself there and my body was the motor. And there is this happiness that comes with being apart of a machine that is almost irreducibly complex and hasn't ever really been improved upon over the last 100 years or so. It is as if you are riding in the way that those "wheelmen" once rode. I am somehow connected to them through a hundred years of time and space by peddling from place to place. A car ride never did that for me. 

     So you want to try commutting to work by bike, but just aren't sure how to get started. Well, here is a pretty good list for those of you who want to commute, but want to do it well because you rightly know that it involves more than just waking up one day, hoping on your trusty metal steed, and then making it to work. Here are the basics:

 1. Find and ride a very simple bike. This means a bike that you could work on if push came to shove and the shove found you on the side of the road and you just wanted to make it home. You do not have to buy the $15,000 Cervelo carbon racer in order to make it work. There are literally hundreds of great bikes sitting unused in the garages of family members that they'd happily trade for a Chili's gift card and you could easily put $30-$100 into them and have something that will do you perfectly. Racks, baskets, and fenders may seem foolish, but not when you are actually using them. And if someone laughs, especially if they are a guy, ask them how manly is it to sit in the A/C and on top of leather seats while your ride to work as opposed to powering yourself and your gear to work by your own two legs! 

2. Once you begin riding your bike to work, check it on a regular basis to make sure all the components are working so they'll be ready to work when they are needed. 

3. Plan your route wisely. What I mean by this is take several different ways to your job before you try it once on your bike and do this while you drive your car, but think while you are driving as if you were already riding your bike. How is the traffic? How well is the road paved? Is there room on the road's shoulder? When is traffic the busiest? Is there a road that runs parallel to the one you usually drive, but it is much less busy? How many inclines does your route have? Etc. 

4. Always pack the night before or at least plan in your head what you will need. This helps limit the easily found excuses when you are rushed in the morning as you are almost guaranteed to be. 

5. Only pack the necessities. This sounds like common sense, but do you really need all the clothes, toiletries, books and papers from the office to work on at night, are you going to use that whole bottle of shampoo when you shower, etc? Pack light. Pack smart. You are carrying or hauling all that you pack and that 10 lb. Earth Science book that you aren't going to have the time to look through just made that worst incline that is separating you and that hot woman and a sweet baby you are heading towards that much harder.  

6. Lock your bike or store it inside. I know some of you reading this will ask yourself if you are reading a post written by me, but I have changed. People will steal. They have from me. They don't care. Even "good" people will steal. Don't trust anyone 'cept your mama may be the phrase to go with on this one and some of your moms may steal too. 

7. Check the weather. Check the weather. Check the weather. And then do it again. You don't want to be riding your bike when it is 110 degrees in the shade. Trust me. Asphalt doesn't reflect the heat back. It soaks it up and sends it into the very depths of your being. You don't want to be caught in a torrential down pour and then have to wait it out or look like the biggest cheapskate alive when you ask someone for a ride by telling them you are saving money on gas by riding your bike this week, so could you just use their gas and money to get home. That doesn't fly. 

8. Put lights on the front and back of your bike. People will look at you coming and still pull out in front of you or cut you off in the broad open daylight and this danger increases exponentially when it gets a few shades darker outside. Ride as if everyone was Mr. Magoo. And get lights you know how to work and put them on full beam, not the blinking beam. People don't pay attention to blinking things. I know you think they do, but they don't. Just the other night, I was coming up to an intersection that a car was at and then flashed my light at them, they waved, and they still pulled out in front of me and I had to swerve to keep from getting hit. 

9. Wear regular clothes. Even though pretending to be a pro cyclist is far past fun, the truth is that we are not them. Trust me once again, I have pretended to be Lance and George H. more times than most of you would be comfortable with, but your or my morning commute is not the Tour. You can know that because I am riding and I wouldn't even last three miles on the Tour. Wear clothes you own and leave the LYCRA at home. Nobody needs to see that and if your body is like mine, you may not even want to see that. 

10. Obey the traffic laws. If you want to be respected and you want others to give you your share of the precious road, drive your mode of transportation like you are deserving of it. The person who just screamed at you while driving that huge Chevy Z71 doesn't share the road and has never read the biking laws and only knows the rules about whoever has the most toys still dies and YOLO. Only take up your section of the lane. Use hand signals. Stop at stop signs. Don't run yellow lights. Stop at stop lights. Basically just follow the rules. You want them to. Don't expect things from people you aren't willing to do. 

11. Wear a helmet. Yes, the messenger guys in Portland and NYC don't and neither do the crazy people in Florida during Bike Week, but you are not there. They also have skinny jeans, 27 piercings, and 100 tats. You don't. your other car is a Subaru and you are looking forward to going to Lowe's on Saturday. You work for an insurance company, a church, or even a little private school. You need your brain for everything. You can't over-protect it. You can't be too cautious with it. They don't do brain transplants at your local hospital. and if they did, you couldn't afford it and who knows who's brain you'd end up with. Maybe it would be that really smart guy who invented the scientific calculator, but ride like the only brain you'd get is that poor little beauty queen from South Carolina that was so big on YouTube for a while. Scary, right? Wear a helmet. 

The perfect passenger on a great bike. 

Enjoy your ride. Remember to laugh out loud and even feel a little sorry for those people stuck in their cars. Yes, you are sweaty and your thighs are burning, but you aren't stuck at that traffic light ahead because you can take a side street or cut across somewhere they can't take their Denali or BMW. And your ride home didn't cost you more than you'd spend at the local Sonic on a Route 44 and you didn't have to hit the gym because you got the cheese sticks too.  

Happy riding and happier reading, 

  David